If you’d like to stain on your own, here is some basic rules of thumb when staining your deck.
Before doing any staining work, you need to clean off your deck. You can get away with only sweeping new decks, but if you have an older deck, you should pressure wash it first.
Before you start staining, figure out where you will start and stop staining that will allow you to easily enter and exit the deck. You don’t want to get halfway through staining before you discover you’ve worked yourself into a corner.
- Put painter’s tape around walls where they meet the deck. Doing so will help keep stain off of the walls.
- Put down drop cloth in the area of the deck you plan to stain last. put your paint tray and stain on top of the drop cloth. After making sure you have properly mixed your stain, pour it into the paint tray.
- Connect a paint pole to the back of your paint pad. Dip the pad into the tray, and apply a coat of stain to the entire surface of the deck. If the paint pad doesn’t apply stain to the spaces between deck boards, fill in the space with a paintbrush.
- Once you’ve finished the surface, add stain to the sides of the deck.
- Allow stain to dry 24 hours before using the deck surface.
Rule of thumb is a deck needs re-stained every 2-3 years to keep the wood protected.